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Slicing and dicing NYC Noise, by handling agency

All noise complaints broken down by agency to which they were directed. Over 99% of the 3.31 million service requests were directed to the Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) or the New York City Police Department (NYPD). This is how they plot over time:

NYC Noise 2004 to 2017, by year and top handling agencies

Why the sharp spike from 2009 to 2010? That’s drilling down for another post, another day.  For those who prefer tables of raw numbers:

NYC Noise 2004 to 2017, by year and top handling agencies - table

The other agencies involved are in the table below.  DPR is Parks and Recreation, the department, not the TV show; the complaint was about “Loud Talking – Street/Sidewalk” and seems to have been mis-categorized. The other two abbreviations are Dept. of Sanitation (all those garbage trucks clanking about at 3am) and the Economic Development Corporation. The first few for the EDC that I scanned were about helicopters hovering, flying above, or flying too low and making a racket. I know engine noise from ferries goes to the DEP (I filed a few of them).  Are there inspectors at the EDC hired for the sole purpose of monitoring chopper noise. What do they do on an average day and how do they do it? If you’re not NORAD or NYPD or some such, you’re unlikely to have choppers of your own to chase after the noisy… but I digress.  I wonder why the city doesn’t fold chopper noise oversight into the Dept. of Environmental Protection’s purview. Makes more sense.


311 data from NYC Open Data downloaded at various times. As of Feb 5, 2018, 27 million rows, 52 variables till 2009, 53 variables from 2010. Parsed using R v3.4.3 in RStudio v1..1.423

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